I pinned The Happy Housewife’s Grilled Pizza recipe a while ago and finally added it to this week’s menu plan. All of us are glad I did! Since it was Leftover Wednesday, I chopped up grilled chicken and hamburgers along with some onion and snacking peppers to top our pizzas. B just had a plain cheese pizza.

Look at this beautiful dough; can you see the spices in it? It smelled so good! My kitchen was covered in flour and it took a while to clean up, but it was worth it. I used my stand mixer to make the dough and accidentally turned the speed up too high, too soon. ;o)

After I rolled out the dough, the hubs oiled them (we used Wegmans Basting Oil instead of olive oil) and grilled them up. This is actually the 2nd set of crusts. The 1st three got charred. Although B does not like his crust that way, the hubs and I don’t mind. I cut them up and saved them for snacking/dipping later.

The 2nd set of crusts were much lighter. The hubs worried that the bottoms would char again while we waited for the cheese to melt. Therefore, after topping our crusts, we put them in the oven instead of back on the grill.

I was fine with that; we’d gotten the grill flavor on the crusts already.

Following the recipe, we divided the dough into 6 pizzas and each of us only ate half our pizza at dinner. We will all be eating the other half at lunch. Everyone agreed that grilled pizzas were to be added to the dinner rotation. :o)

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So many of you have inquired as to how I am doing after my surgery and I apologize for not responding to everyone. Recovery has not been a bed of roses; every other day is a bad one, and I wasn’t eager to type it all out. So I won’t. I will say there has been a lot of pain (which is almost gone now), unpleasant side effects and tears. But it should be all uphill from now on. I did my hair and put on makeup today for the 1st time since March 30th; that did wonders for my mood! ;o)

Everyone at the hospital was kind, detailed and solicitous. Some were even funny. I had no idea the hospital was a teaching one. I panicked when they told me. I was already in my gown, shower cap and booties but almost bolted at that news. I watch Grey’s Anatomy; I know what happens at teaching hospitals! I was not going to be some guinea pig with a 007 intern practicing on my head!

They assured me that if any residents were to be in my surgery, I would be told ahead of time. “But I don’t want any internworking on me,” I insisted. They would let me know of any residents were there for more than observation. “When? Inrecovery?” The doctors would come to me before surgery and let me know what everyone’s roll was.

The first “doctor” I met was the anesthesiologist’s intern! Oh, hell to the no! He’s just going to observe. Mm, hmm, he better,because I will come back and haunt him if he doesn’t! He didn’t just observe; he held a mask on my face and told me to take deep breaths. The mask was supposed to cover my nose and mouth but he managed to put it over my right eye, holding my eyelid captive in mid blink.

They either didn’t hear me or ignored me and I couldn’t move the mask myself because one of the nurses had just finished wrapping me up in styrofoam and strapping me down to the table. I looked like a mummy in a psych ward with Sammy Davis, Jr. eyes.

The bones in my ear were supposed to be gone by then but the doctor still didn’t know if he’d be able to put the prosthetic bones in that day. If the mass removal went too long, or if the middle ear was too inflamed, he would have to do it another time.

When surgery was over the doctor went to the hubs in the waiting room and told him that after he removed the mass he was shocked to see all 3 ear bones still intact! Each showed signs of erosion, but it was minimal, they were all attached to each other and attached on each end! There was no need for prosthetic ear bones.

He’s done thousands of these surgeries but said he’d never seen that before. I guess none of his former patients has had as many people praying for them as I had. Thank you all so much for your thoughts, prayers and love!!! Y’all worked a miracle for me and I am so grateful!

Thank you to those of you who brought us food the 1st week after the surgery. It was such a burden off me to not have to worry about feeding us! And there was always enough food not only for dinner, but leftovers for lunch, as well.

I thank my bestie, R and her husband. Her husband took a day off work to stay home with one sick child and pick up the other after school, so she could sit with my hubs in the waiting room. That was a wonderful gift to the hubs! He didn’t sit there, alone, and worry or play what ifs in his head and the time did not drag on. He and my bestie talked about everything, he said, and had a wonderful time. He is so grateful he had her there and so am I!

I want to thank the hubs for taking care of me, holding me, wiping my tears, administering medicine, taking care of B and the house and holding it together. It’s so hard for men to see a loved one ill. They’re fixers; that’s what they do. It’s in they’re DNA. He kept his frustration and anger (born out of fear) over not being about to fix me or take all the hurt away for me, from me. Internalizing that isn’t good for a body, but he knows once I’m able to climb out of my tree, he gets to go right up his.

I still can’t hear in my left ear, but it’s still healing. My hearing won’t be checked until 6-7 weeks after surgery, to give everything time to heal and swelling to go down. You can’t see the hole in my head because the doctor drilled where the back of my ear meets my head, and then covered the hole with a fold of skin (double layer for double protection). My left ear pokes out further than my right now; that may change after time or it may stay the same. I don’t mind.

Thank you all. I hold you very dear in my heart and am sending your prayers back at you. MUAH!

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Our homeschool co-op had a History Fair this morning and B’s presentation included a poster board. I’ve always been critical of parents who do their child’s work for them. You can totally tell by looking at the Art wall in a preschool classroom or the 1st grade poster board presentations, which ones were done solely by children and which ones were done by parents who love neatness and straight lines. ;o) B’s presentation was not started until early yesterday afternoon and was still not done when he and the hubs left at 4pm for a planned guys’ outing. It was just me and that unfinished History project on the floor and I was sooo tempted to finish it myself! I felt like Jacques the shrimp in Finding Nemo when Gill tells him he cannot clean the tank. At first he was all, “I shall resist!” but the dirtier the tank got, he couldn’t resist. When Gill caught Jacques cleaning, he hung his head. “I am ashamed.” But isn’t this always the case in life? Be careful who you judge because it always comes back to bite you! At least it does for me. If I’ve judged a stranger by the snippet of their life I see from the outside, sometime later I’ll find myself in that exact situation, and “I am ashamed.” I did resist, though, and he finished his project before dinner. Phew! Yesterday was a total flashback to when I was in school. I always left projects to the last minute and never learned my lesson because I always received good marks on them. At least it’s easier for kids these days to get information for projects at the last minute. I had no internet. Most projects were due on Mondays and I never remembered that the local library was closed on Sundays until after it closed on Saturdays. A 1974 Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia was my only reference. Anywho, the History Fair was great this morning. Some children chose a literal time or event in History and some chose to explain the history of a person or something. There were displays on US Presidents, WWII, Hasbro Toys, Sharks, Egypt, Native Americans, Robots, The Wright Brothers, Ballet, Knights, Winnie the Pooh, Harriet Tubman, US Missions to the Moon! I learned so much from these awesome kids! I walked around and not only read from their displays but also listened to them tell me about their subject matter. Somethings I didn’t know before this fair:

Harriet Tubman was not her given name; she was born Araminta Ross.

A.A. Milne only wrote 4 books with Winnie the Pooh in them and not all off the Winnie the Pooh characters we have today appeared in those four books. Everything else “Pooh” we have today were expanded upon from his original four works.

Hasbro was founded by three Rhode Island brothers and their 1st toys were doctor and nurse kits and modeling clay.

Leonardo DaVinci designed the first robot in 1495.

I had no idea how many countries were involved in WWII. The Allies consisted of 26 countries alone! I only knew about the “major” ones.

There is a Goblin Shark out there with a long, flat snout.

B chose to do a “montage” (his word, not mine) of the 1st six Presidents in a Bag he’s created. I pulled the pix off my blog, ordered enlarged prints from Costco and B copied and pasted the descriptions from my blog posts. He glued them onto a poster board from Dollar Tree and wrote a description at the top.

After everyone had presented and learned, we went outside. The kids played and we mommas chatted. A very successful co-op, indeed!